The good thing about being an avid and prolific daydreamer is that your mind goes a lot of places, thinks a lot of things, remakes the world the way you want it and you are never bored.
The bad thing about being an avid and prolific daydreamer is that your mind goes a lot of places, thinks a lot of things, remakes the world the way you want it and it gives you hope.
Now, before you jump down my throat, I'm a fan of hope. I think hope, in and of itself, is a very good and necessary thing. I have a lot of hope about a lot of things. I have a great hope that one day our world will be free of war and intolerance and hate.
But personal things? I'm scared to let the hope get too big. Because if and when it doesn't work out, the crash is hard. It hurts. And half of me is trying to be realistic and telling myself not to hope too hard because of that crash. But the other half? That's hoping with everything it can and telling the cynical part that so what if it hurts? Getting over it is not that big of a deal, it's totally doable, and isn't it better to hope?
Anyway, I'm kind of on a roller coaster at the moment; one minute soaring with hope and the next swooping down into being realistic. It keeps happening and I'm driving myself crazy.
I'm trying to find projects to occupy my brain. Too many things going on in there and it's hard to process them all.
One time when I was in the hairdresser's, I read an article about a lottery winner. She was a single mother and really struggling to get by. Every night before she went to sleep she would picture herself being presented with the winning lottery cheque. She visualised in detail exactly what she was wearing and the exact amount on the cheque...yes, she won that exact amount and when she went to collect the cheque she wore the clothes she had imagined herself wearing. So squash down the realistic side and put a lot of detail into seeing yourself getting the acceptance letter for your story!
ReplyDeleteMy brain definitely has a detailed description of that acceptance...but you're telling me never to entertain any of the thoughts about the rejection, huh? Maybe I'll write it all out, hmm?;)
DeleteThanks for the support Alder!
Yep, Alder's right. I think of hope as having a goal. Every time you set a goal for yourself you're hoping you'll reach it. Nothing wrong with that. It's like labor, expect the worst but hope for the best. I still use that from prenatal class. You can't think that every author out there got accepted the first time out. Some of my fave authors have stacks of rejection letters they saved. And you may get a revise & resubmit which is not a bad thing. Means they want to work with you. And just imagine, there could be an acceptance too!
ReplyDeleteI fully expect a rejection. I know it's not any great masterpiece. Which is why that hope is so hard to bear sometimes. I'd be totally cool with a revise and resubmit though! Either way though, it's a balancing act: trying to balance the hope with the reality.
Delete